Data management system

As the amount of data archived by the NOT keeps growing and due to the increment in size and frequency of the produced data as a result of the use of the new controllers (on ALFOSC, but planned for others) we need better data management, both to keep overheads at a minimum; to make a better (and faster) on-site post-processing; and also to improve the distribution of data both to visiting astronomers, to external entities (ToO, Service) and to our archival infrastructure. This implies both a procedural change and a renewal of some of the operation-critical hardware.

In particular, the desired ``dataflow'' should be decided taking in to account current developments such as the new Observing Block system, and the full definition of data through their FITS headers (potentially indicating how they should be processed, distributed and archived). The detailed policy is currently being discussed, and the plan is to implement the hardware and software changes as for archiving and data delivery to the users during the current period.